


Desensitized

by psychosomatic86



Series: The Holistic Collective [1]
Category: Dirk Gently - All Media Types, Dirk Gently - Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, In a way, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9300788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychosomatic86/pseuds/psychosomatic86
Summary: It doesn't work right anymore, the universe.Thusly, neither does she.





	

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt I received on tumblr. Yall should follow me @holistic-fiber (more prompts to come~)

“It’s okay. Hey, _hey_ , Ken, c’mon,” Bart reaches over, clumsily cupping Ken’s face in her grimy fingers, guiding his gaze to meet hers.

He looks petrified.

“Ken,” she repeats as his eyes refuse to settle, staring absently just over her head. “Listen’na me, Ken.”

Without even registering the movement of her hand, Bart slaps him, hard.

“ _Ken_!”

“They’re gonna kill us!” Ken yelps, snapping out of his haze and grabbing instinctively for her.

“No. No, no,” Bart says as he clutches her tightly, such a confident assertion completely inconducive to her mental dialogue of “ _shit shit shit shit shit_ ”. “No, they ahn’t.”

“They have a tank,” Ken whimpers, and as if by mention of its name, a cacophony of metallic grinding minces the silence as the tank betters its aim, trains the perilous pupil of its canon directly, it seems, at Bart.

“And I have the univahse, Ken, ah you serious right now?”

Much as she wants to make this as believable as possible, Bart can’t actually bring herself to push Ken away as she feigns chastisement. Hopefully her words will instill enough courage in him to sustain the next few minutes, but that’s all she has anymore.

Hope.

Hope and minutes.

She’d try hoping for more, but the universe doesn’t work that way. Not anymore.

“This is _me_ w’ talkin’ about,” she laughs, forces it, tries to make it sound genuine, _forces_ it to sound genuine.

“B-but your leg,” Ken persists, and she wants to punch him. He's not even _trying._

An idea hits her suddenly, a metaphorical rock to her soft, vulnerable skull, and she tears open the glove box, procuring the pistol nestled within. In her periphery, she glimpses the sound of the tank’s hatch opening, hears the murky silhouette of the driver poke his head out like a verminous mole, brandishing a megaphone whose message she resolutely ignores.

“Watch,” she says, and it frightens her how sure she sounds as she settles the muzzle of the gun against her left temple, forefinger curling around the trigger, thumb luring the safety down from its dutiful perch.

She’s played Russian roulette dozens of times before, mostly to con poisonous men out of their dirty money. And then she’d shoot them because, well, she was supposed to, of course.

But this is different, not because this is the exact type of gun you should _never_ use for the game, but because she has no idea if it’s loaded or not. They nicked it off their last roadblock, and neither she nor Ken bothered to check the magazine, and she has no idea…

 _Click_!

Relief practically drowns her, chokes her lungs, and then horror floods anew.

“Besides,” she somehow manages to shrug despite her shivering insides, making to tuck the ambiguously loaded pistol in the back of her waistband but coyly slipping it out of view down the side of her seat, instead. “You saw at that mansion. Bald guys couldn’t touch me.”

Ken pulls back, realization softening his worry lines, though only marginally.

“So just let me take care of this, ‘kay?”

The megaphone man interrupts whatever Ken was about to say, and they both turn to look through the grisly windscreen.

“Promise me you’ll be okay,” Ken finally manages once the megaphone squeals its last demands - stupid demands of engine off, hands up, _blah blah blah_.

“I don’t make promises,” Bart says matter of factly, which is true. Partly. _She_ never promises anything.

“Well then don’t do anything stupid,” Ken hiccups, and it’s through tears, the kind you can never hear until someone laughs when you aren’t looking.

“I _definitely_ can’t promise that,” Bart promises, smiling, but she doesn’t laugh, because she doesn’t want Ken to hear.

He’s crying in earnest now, and, without even registering her movements, she seizes him in a fierce hug.

“See ya in a few,” she croaks quietly.

“Knock ‘em dead,” Ken murmurs into her hair, and when she pulls away, they can both see each other’s tears.

“Be careful,” Ken chooses for his last words.

“Hey,” Bart cuffs his chin affectionately, grins all lopsided and maniacal as she chooses her’s.

“I’m used to it.”

With that, she throws open her door and slouches out, quickly grabbing the nearest sizable rock before striding toward the artillery. Good thing they were on a back road, she observes as they observe her. Maybe the universe hasn’t abandoned her after all.

Or yet.

She doesn’t think about that.

She doesn’t think about him.

She doesn’t think about the universe.

She raises the rock.

She raises the guns.

And when the bullets hit her, she blooms like a rose.


End file.
